The Sins of the Wolf - Anne Perry [41]
“Dunno,” Tilly said with indifference.
“Don’t be daft,” Doris said again. “She can’t count.”
“I can so!” Tilly protested indignantly. “I know ‘ow many’s ten.”
“Yer in’t ten,” Doris said, dismissing the subject. She looked back at Hester. “So what didn’t you steal then, my fine lady wot got caught at it?”
“A brooch with pearls in it,” Hester replied tartly. “What are you respectable ladies doing that brings you here?”
Doris smiled, showing stained teeth, strong and regular. They would have been beautiful had they been white. “Well, some of us was letting gentlemen pay for their pleasures, which is only fair, as I sees it. But there was one in me back room as was screevin’, and the pigs don’t like that, cos’ the briefs don’t like it.” She watched Hester’s confusion with evident complacency. “Or to put it fancy like, so your ladyship can understand it: they says I was taking money for fornication, and the geezer in the back room was writing recommendations and legal papers for people as wanted ’em but couldn’t get ’em the usual way. Very good wi’ a pen, is Tam. Write anything for yer … deeds in property, wills, letters of authority, references o’ character. You name it, ’e’ll write it, and takes a good lawyer to know the difference.”
“I see….”
“Do yer? Do yer now?” Her Hp curled. “I don’t think yer see anything, yer stupid cow.”
“I see you in here the same as I am,” Hester said. “Which makes you just as stupid, except you’ve been here before. To do it twice takes a real art.”
Doris swore. Marge smiled mirthlessly. Tilly slunk backwards and crouched by the end of the cot, expecting a fight.
“You’ll get yours,” Doris said sullenly. “They’ll put yer somewhere like the ‘Steel’ down Cold Bath Fields for a few years, stitching all day till yer fingers bleed, eating slops, ‘ot all summer and cold all winter, and nobody ter talk ter wi’ yer fancy voice.”
Marge nodded. “That’s right,” she said dolefully. “Keep yer in silence, they do. No talking. An’ masks, too.”
“Masks?” Hester did not understand her.
“Masks,” Marge repeated, dragging her hand across her face. “Masks, so yer can’t see nobody’s phys.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. Just to make you feel worse, I suppose. So yer alone. Don’t learn nothing wicked from nobody else. It’s the new idea.”
Hester’s day was taking on more and more of the proportions of a nightmare. This last piece of information lent it a quality of total unreality. Hester tried to imagine troops of women in gray dresses, silent and masked, faceless, laboring, cold, filled with hatred and despair. In such a world, how could they be anything else? And children who spun tops in the street and got in people’s way. She was choked with a mixture of rage and pity, and the almost hysterical desire to escape. Her heart was beating high in her throat, and her knees were suddenly weak, even though she was sitting down. She could hardly have stood, even if she had wanted to and there had been any point.
“Sick?” Doris said with a smile. “Yer’ll get used ter it. An’ don’t think yer ’avin’ the cot, cos yer ain’t. Marge is sick for real. She gets it. Any’ow she was ’ere first.”
Early the following morning Hester was taken to a magistrate’s court and remanded in custody. From there she was taken to the prison at Newgate and placed in a cell with two pickpockets and a prostitute. Within an hour she was sent for and told that her lawyer had come to speak with her.
She felt a wild surge of hope as if the long nightmare were over, the darkness dispelled. She shot to her feet and almost fell over in her eagerness to get through the door and along the bare stone passage to the room where Rathbone would be.
“Now, now,” the wardress said sharply, her hard, blunt face tightening. “Just be’ave yerself. No call to get excited. Talk, that’s all. Come wi’ me, stay be’ind me and speak when yer spoken to.” And she turned on her heel and marched away with Hester at her elbow.
They stopped in front of a large metal door. The wardress produced a huge key from the chain at her belt and placed it in the lock